I Am The Cheese - Book Review

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I Am The Cheese - Robert Cormier

I Am The Cheese is often categorised as a book for young people. It deserves a wider audience than that. Yes, the protagonist is a teenager and yes, the book is written in fairly straightforward English, but what's wrong with that? The main point of any novel is to tell a good story and Cormier certainly achieves that.  (Review continues below)

Image: I Am the Cheese (Readers Circle)

Synopsis 

A short summary

The narrative of the book concerns Adam Farmer, a teenager who sets out on a lone bicycle journey from one town to another. With him he carries a package for his father. What the package contains and why Adam is making the journey are not immediately made clear. The journey could clearly be interpreted symbolically, but let's not ruin a good read by over-analysing it!

The story follows three tracks. We have Adam's journey as the main narrative drive. Interspersed with this we have a second time track with Adam in what appears to be a psychiatric hospital. Here he is undergoing therapy with a doctor who is helping him to regain his memory. Events and thoughts during the bike ride link with Adam's memories in the hospital and these trigger off flashbacks through which the past is filled in. It's a clever structure that allows Cormier to pass information on to the reader without it feeling like an info-dump.

Discovery 

As you might expect, Adam starts to discover that things are not as he had always believed them to be. Quite literally his whole life is a lie. We get caught up in his sense of urgency and also his growing paranoia and confusion. Like him, we stop knowing who to trust. By half way through the book we have a good idea of most of the background to the story. At this stage we want Adam to remember more so that we can share the details, yet at the same time we are yelling at him not to give too much away. (Well, I was - I do tend to get rather over-involved in a good book!)

The ending when it comes is in two phases. At first it appears to be disappointing. We are presented with a "twist" that we probably saw coming. Then, as we are thinking "was that it?" there is a final coda. These last couple of pages of text contain the true ending and it is all the more chilling for the dry and officious way in which it is presented.

I Am The Cheese is bleak, cynical and depressing. It teaches you to question reality and to have no faith in authority. Good lessons for any young person and also for plenty of naive adults.

Conclusion 

I Am The Cheese is bleak, cynical and depressing. It teaches you to question reality and to have no faith in authority.

Good lessons for any young person and also for plenty of naive adults.

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I Am the Cheese (Readers Circle)

I Am the Cheese (Readers Circle)

by: Robert Cormier

Amazon Price: $8.99 (as of 11/09/2009)Buy Now

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